Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Lion's Study

"We have cast about looking for the sequencing code without success. I suspect we should try to assemble the chunks into plausible order manually with auto-linkage assist and resume the search in parallel."

Holding up one finger, she said, "There many be a third option … give me a minute."

The team had reason to believe they were well within the primary synchronization event window and harvesting concurrency benefits in such times was low risk. He was acutely aware of the recent setback though. Warning signals were thought to be a result of the experiment when in fact they were simply predicting falsification.

Precision launching in the virtual near weightlessness was most of the navigation task. Space/Time lock an expensive resource best not used at all but there if needed. Given the species presumed evolutionary history it amazed him how intuitive flight felt inside. "Why?" for another time, he thought.

The smaller of the near objects in the target volume resembled items suspended in fluid as if buoyancy was offsetting some gravity. Others were rigid as if resting against some floor out of the field of view. The ever present outliers of uncertainty could, at any time, disrupt an otherwise thoughtfully considered path to a point of interest. The pit bull was as friendly looking as just about any animal's face. But some might turn at a most unexpected time.

He expected to be pressed once again by those who had a right to know by virtue of their being subject to what they were developing. It was tempting to just follow the training while pretending he had more important things to do. He didn't want to regress though. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door …